Third Idea Consulting

So I took another briefing with Sword Ciboodle yesterday regarding its SAS-powered CRM suite for mid- to large enterprise. That makes something like four in the past two months. These folks really want to get the word out—when I worked at CRM magazine, we typically didn’t have editorial staff meetings as often.

I’ve already discussed Ciboodle One (the agent desktop) in this space, so I won’t repeat myself except to say that it’s probably the cleanest and best example of its ilk I’ve ever seen. I haven’t had as much time in front of the other elements, Ciboodle Flow and Ciboodle Live, at least until yesterday. Seeing the components working together made a better case for integrated CRM with top-flight analytics than anything I could say. Ciboodle gets it.

Ciboodle also treated me to a demo of Ciboodle Crowd, the last link in the chain. [Warning: Link contains unfiltered marketing content. Caveat lector.] Crowd is the social platform. More to the point, it’s the environment for companies to manage their participation in social CRM. Looks good, and it clearly isn’t dependent on any specific social media, so it can adapt as old players drop out and new ones appear.

All this is good for CRM, good for Ciboodle, for SAS, and also for consultants like me. SAS was smart enough to partner with Ciboodle to provide applicability and usability in CRM, and Ciboodle was smart to recognize the value of powerhouse business intelligence. Together they provide a suite with a lot of possibilities built in. And to their credit, the companies provide the services to back it up, so that the customer isn’t purchasing six-figure shelfware. Capgemini appears to be helping to achieve this end.

But vendor services can only take you so far. There are still too many potential buyers of Ciboodle’s suite who have only a vague idea of what they want from it, or who haven’t put their organizations through the sort of cultural and process evaluation needed to get the most out of the purchase. Mistakes can be made with those tools even when they’re used correctly, at least in a technical sense. A hammer and chisel work really well together, but you probably shouldn’t use them to defrost your freezer unless you’ve carefully considered how to do it and understand the risks involved. (I have done this, and despite due consideration managed to wreck a freezer by focusing on individual hammer blows instead of the big picture.)

When somebody decides they want to become an astronaut, the first step in that journey is not flight training and mission briefings; it’s learning about the job, the dangers, and the potential benefits. Ciboodle and SAS have built a mighty space vehicle, and they are providing top-notch training to anybody who enters the program. I get to be the career counselor who makes sure it’s a good fit, and I can definitely live with that.

This is something I’ve had on my mind for a while, but haven’t found a convenient time to bring up. Of course, somebody else was able to do it first. Jason Perlow’s ZDNet blog, Tech Broiler, has his thoughts on the diminishing returns of an ever-expanding social network. I won’t summarize the post—it’s worth your time to read it yourself—but I will say that there’s more than enough frustration with Facebook’s security, permission structure, and communications model to inspire people to give up on it altogether. This doesn’t mean I intend to do so, but I understand.

Also, as a note to Mr. Perlow, one gaijin to another: Seppuku is traditionally performed with a knife (tanto) or short sword (wakizashi), not the katana.

That’s not really what I wanted to discuss, but it’s as good a segue as any. Perlow’s post made me think again about how the social media boom has affected the way we spend our time online. There are enough different social network services now that they don’t even really compete anymore—except in the sense that they all want you to spend more time with them than any other. Each has its own specific use profile, and most individuals would never consider using one for something other than its core value.

Let’s take me as an example. In addition to this blog, I actively use Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to varying degrees, as well as some old-school forums that match my interests; there’s some passive participation in other social media (gotta have YouTube access and various wikis), but that’s about it.

• Twitter is my other broadcast and communication channel, the one I use when writing a proper blog post isn’t the way to go.
• LinkedIn is my professional lifeline, the go-to option for exchanging ideas with subject matter experts, making sure I stay connected to people I don’t have regular contact with, and making myself available for hire.
• Facebook is for fun and time-killing. I use it to keep in touch with high school friends, to catch the occasional interesting article somebody posts in their feed, and to play games.

There isn’t a whole lot of overlap between these big three, integrations notwithstanding. I couldn’t imagine trying to maintain a professional presence solely on Twitter, and the entertainment options of LinkedIn pretty much end with the Answers page. This means that each social network requires separate attention, and their sheer number means networking can be a full-time job. My reaction to Google Buzz was basically “Oh crap, one more thing to add to the list.” It took more of my time, and didn’t have a clear niche of its own, so I eventually opted out.

Facebook might be next for me, assuming I can break the addictive hold of Mafia Wars and Viking Clan. This is not solely because of anything inherently wrong with Facebook (though there’s plenty)—I’ve fallen into the trap of bigger = better. I have over 600 “friends” on Facebook, and I honestly don’t know who most of them are. The games I play there require a large network to get maximum value, so I made and accepted lots of friend requests. They are not my friends (except the ones I already knew outside of Facebook). I couldn’t pick them out of a police lineup. Some of them have social and political views that I can’t stand. But I keep them around anyway because they serve a function and because it’s too much trouble to weed them out.

Still, the more FB friends you have, the more messages you get. I hate leaving messages unviewed; I regularly check my email spam so I don’t have the feeling there’s something waiting for me, and it’s this feeling that made Buzz such a burden.

Connections on Twitter or LinkedIn don’t require the same level of supervision. I follow the people I want to follow, and it’s easy enough to unfollow them—and there’s only good in having lots of followers myself. LinkedIn doesn’t get in my way unless it’s an opportunity of some sort for me. Facebook just keeps poking at me, asking me to get back in touch with Friend X whom I’ve never met, or buy Godfather Points for my mob, or install a toolbar, or expand my permissions, etc. etc.

Honestly, I don’t think I’d mind any of it if there was an easier way to manage it. What I really want is a central control panel for all my networks that lets me choose what information is available to each, with bulletproof security so I don’t have to worry about getting all my networks jacked at once. After that, all I have to do is work on my self-control so I don’t play Bejeweled all weekend.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised—if anything, the surprise is in how long we waited—that organizations are using social media to put pressure on other organizations. Recently, environmental activism group Greenpeace used a YouTube video to drive customer outrage against snack food producer Nestlé for its use of palm oil sourced from dwindling orangutan habitats.

The result was a ton of news coverage (from CNN, CNET, Forbes, BusinessWeek, The Guardian, and many others—thanks, Google), a practical shutdown of Nestlé’s Facebook page due to angry traffic, and what Greenpeace wanted: severance of the Nestlé relationship with Sinar Mas, the oil supplier accused of illegal deforestation.

Now, I loves me some KitKats. I am aware of the horrible toll they inflict on my health and I eat them anyway, though not so often that you have to worry about my imminent demise. I will continue to eat them in the future. But I’m glad that Greenpeace brought the palm oil problem to my attention, so I can watch for it in other foods. And you can be sure I’ll take a hiatus from my KitKat consumption. I would rather do without a yummy snack than condemn a piece of our world to death.

Side note: Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group was on the most recent Brian Lehrer Live to comment on this situation. (The social media aspect, not my fat butt and KitKat addiction.) I can’t find the video, so I’d appreciate it if somebody would link it in the comments.

Is this a good thing? Should the power that has finally come into the hands of the customer be co-opted by large and powerful groups to further their own ends? My opinion is a guarded yes. Greenpeace is the example at hand, and it is not trying to make a profit—it’s trying to increase awareness of the harm we do to the ecology in the name of profit. While the group has had its excesses (the term ecoterrorism has been applied to some of Greenpeace’s activities), it generally acts to expose a situation it finds worrisome, and lets public opinion do the rest.

As with everything else, there’s the potential for abuse. If there’s something we can learn from social media, it’s that stories spread fast and far, much more so than the truth behind the story can catch up. A brand can be destroyed by one person’s efforts—typically a customer with an axe to grind over shoddy merchandise or poor service. Imagine the damage that can be done by a large, well-funded, coordinated group with a much larger axe to grind. If the cause is just and no lies are told, then I’m okay with it. But what if it had been Hershey’s spreading the Nestlé story? Would we be as sanguine about chocolate maker A inflaming consumer outrage against chocolate maker B, gaining market share by levying accusations against its competitor in the guise of social justice? What if the allegations were untrue?

I don’t really care what happens to individual corporations. I care about customers losing their voice as they’re drowned out by louder ones. All I ask is that you evaluate a story before you spread it. That’s just part of the social contract, and it applies to social media just as much as it does to traditional talk.

Many of you know that I come from a print media background—mostly magazines, with a few books shuffled in. While I’ve moved on in my career to a place where most of my work seems to be electronic in nature—blogging, ebooks, social networking—I still have a soft spot for words on dead trees. So whenever somebody says that books, magazines, or newspapers are dying forms of media, I have to speak up.

Of course, nobody’s actually said that to me recently, so I need to stretch a bit. Just the other week, this brilliant video posted all over the Interwebs. While it turns out that it was prepared by a unit of Penguin Publishing, the message is no less valid. Make sure you watch and listen to the whole thing before you make up your mind.

Yes, it’s on YouTube. Yes, social networking has been a big deal long enough to go from fad to trend to established communication form. But there still has to be something to talk about. One can only get so deep into philosophy, current events, science, and art with Facebook or Buzz status updates. There will always be a place for physical media. These are major sources for big ideas.

New media can be the start of great print too. Social networking is a thousand different sociology experiments writ large, all happening at once. Good information on human behavior is there for the observing. Journalists get leads from Web sources all the time. And who’s to say that a hot exchange of tweets won’t inspire the next great novel—or that a blog won’t help us find out about it?

Sure, circulation and ad revenue are down, but that’s just good news for the trees. Executives must learn that the socialverse isn’t going away, and adjust print’s business practices to reflect this fact. I don’t have the answer yet, nor do they, but we’re working on it.

It’s important for us to stay current with the best thinking in the CRM industry, which is why I try to read the output of my friends and colleagues as much as possible. After falling behind a bit—there’s a lot out there that my blogroll doesn’t cover, must update—I ran across this excellent piece of opinionizing by Denis Pombriant, founder and principal analyst of Beagle Research Group.

Denis is without a doubt the world’s second smartest beagle. (Sorry man—I have a long-standing loyalty to Snoopy.) Clear thinking and the ability to look at the long-term effects of short-term actions make him a great source, and if I have nothing useful to say, I can always direct people to him. As usual, he’s spot on with his comments, so I’ll only add a few thoughts.

When Denis writes, “Too often in early markets customers buy market leading products regardless of their merits and vendors accommodate this need by bragging about market share,” he shows how eager so many of us are to follow the herd. Basing a business operations decision like CRM on market share is the grownup’s version of “all the cool kids are doing it.” It’s fair to include measurable market share—not necessarily leading, just on the charts—as one criterion of the buying decision, but it’s something that should be graded pass/fail. I might not even include it on my list unless there’s likely to be pushback from shareholders worried about where their money is going; there’s a place for small vendors, and not just for catering to customers with tight budgets.

Speaking of tight budgets, there’s this: “[T]ightness in the credit markets has caused a significant amount of demand destruction and that has changed the terms of selling.” I’ve been saying it for years, but it bears repeating that it’s much more important right now to hold onto existing customers than to find new ones. If you know what you need your CRM for—and you’d better—then you have a good head start on picking your vendor criteria. Allow yourself to be guided by what will provide the customer insight to keep your regulars on the balance sheet.

Kudos again to Denis for rocking the smarts.

I ran across an amusing little incident (via MetaFilter) that happened recently in San Francisco, and I felt I needed to share. Members of the Fred Phelps-led Westboro Baptist Church gathered recently for a protest outside the offices of Twitter. I’m going to be smart and stay well clear of discussing the ministry, its protest signs, or the counter-protest to their small rally—you can read and see more of that at either of these not-safe-for-work links—but I have to address what one of the protesters was reported to have said. To quote the Asylum article by Harmon Leon:

As the verbal assault continued, I raised my hand and asked the obvious: “Why Twitter? Does God hate Twitter?”

“We have not quarrels with Twitter. Twitter is a great platform,” stated a gray-haired WBC woman juggling several signs that could be interpreted as funny and ironic if they were actually funny and ironic. Gesturing to one of the younger WBC women, she added, “Meagan, she’s Twittering right now.”

But she explained the reason behind the protest: “Twitter should be used to tell the punks of doomed America that God hates you!”

As a staunch advocate of the use of social media, I have to say this shows a complete misunderstanding of how Twitter works, and reveals the difference between the old and new schools of mass communication. Protesting at the Twitter offices to get the platform to be used in one way or another presupposes that Twitter is a one-way channel that controls all the messages sent through it. It’s like seeing a soda can on the ground next to a recycling bin and complaining that the bin doesn’t reach out and pick up the can.

The new model of social engagement starts with interested parties reaching out to other interested parties. The correct action to take if you want Twitter to “tell the punks of doomed America that God hates you” is to start telling them yourself via Twitter.

Of course, that’s going to be somewhat problematic, since Twitter doesn’t work by telepathy. You can spout all the hate you want (subject to Twitter’s terms of service) but if nobody’s following you, you won’t be heard. The punks of doomed America aren’t going to follow these people to receive daily reminders of how a fringe group thinks they’re damned—well, the masochistic ones might—so the message dies. That’s how it is with social: If you want to reach people, you must have something worthwhile to say.

We’ve been in this recession for a long time. What is it now, two years? (Answer: Yes. The National Bureau of Economic Research says it started in December 2007.) Businesses in all sectors have been hard pressed, especially financial services. That’s not really so surprising; the great sage Homer Simpson once said that beer was “the cause of and the solution to all of life’s problems,” and that sentiment applies fairly accurately to the stock market.

The desperation of the brokerages is plain to see if you catch their advertisements on TV or radio. Each is more eager than ever before to crow about its funds’ performance against this average or that index, as though it was the only company to have a clue how to make money in a down market. And each one’s advice is the same: Switch to us right now.

This is bad advice for just about everybody. The reason it’s bad is that things are tough all over. If any particular financial advisor was significantly outperforming the rest, we likely wouldn’t be in a recession, and that advisor would be raking in the bucks (even more than usual, since they profit by skimming the action like a casino does). Even Goldman Sachs, the company with more Washington influence than should be legal, is having its share of woes. Every broker has some funds that are doing well, and some that aren’t.

On the flip side of this, there are some Internet brokers advertising their own services on the premise that relationships are worthless. They suggest your relationship with your broker is a sham that only benefits the broker. For some people, this might be true. For others, there might not be a need to pay a commission to somebody else for your own informed financial decisions.

Changing your financial advisor is a major step, not something you do because of a commercial. In fact, making any change to your portfolio on a whim is generally a bad idea, though there are still day traders who think the path to success is rapid buying and selling. Successful investing is about patience, long-term plans, and—this is key—the relationship you have with your advisor. If you’re comfortable with your advisor, and believe they understand and are capable of helping you achieve your goals, you’re in the right place.

I’m open to disagreement on these points, as always. FinServ is not the business where I’m smartest, and the preceding post is heavily influenced by the opinions of people I respect and who know better. But isn’t that exactly what I’m talking about with relationships?

The other day, I retweeted a short Social Media Today entry by Maggie McGary about some of the major effects social media are having on our lives. In it, she cited an accurate prediction and a side-by-side strategy comparison of Massachusetts’ senatorial election result; a report on how social networking is helping to save lives in Haiti; and news articles about how major brands are altering or outright abandoning the infamous 30-second spot during the Super Bowl broadcast in favor of social marketing. Now I’m going to add some opinion (about the first two things, at least; I love Super Bowl commercials and will miss them if they fade away).

The effect of social media on politics is nothing we haven’t heard before. Bloggers were important in swaying opinions during the 2004 U.S. presidential election, and Brent Leary and David Bullock’s excellent Barack 2.0 reveals how our current President made effective use of the immediacy and intimacy of social media to win a hotly contested race. The idea that the incumbent party could lose its Senate seat—despite a long history of success combined with sympathy for a fallen statesman—smacks not only of overconfidence but of ignorance.

Social technology has made it easier than ever before to spread word when disaster strikes, and to coordinate immediate relief efforts. Where it once might have taken weeks to arrange donations of money and essentials, motivated people and groups got it done in a matter of days—sometimes hours. Time saved equals lives saved when something as devastating as the Haiti quake hits.

In both cases, the technology is an important indicator and enabler rather than a deciding factor of its own. In both cases, technology is waving a great big flag that says, “This is where the people are!” Paying attention to that flag can have tremendous positive effects, whether in terms of electorate swayed, lives saved, or just business generated. Ignoring it means being ignored in turn. Social media is changing the world, my friends. It may evolve, but it’s not dying out any time soon.

So, after a less-than-spectacular 2009, we’ve arrived in a new year. And it’s cold. Really cold.

Maybe it’s not that bad where you are, but in New York we have it frigid and windy. I happen to love cold weather, and even I find this to be a bit much. The window I’m sitting next to as I write this is not the best insulated, so a draft is pouring off of it onto my left arm. (I prefer to think of pouring drafts in a more delicious liquid format, but I’m not here to talk about my weakness for fine adult beverages.)

I can hear you wondering what, if anything, this has to do with the business of getting and keeping customers. I’m getting to that. It’s just taking me a while because my brain is impaired by the cold; my fingers aren’t doing much better. It’s cold enough that, were I outside, I’d be looking for a shop to go into just to warm up. As it is, I’m considering leaving my drafty apartment for just such an adventure. And there’s the tie-in.

Walk-in customers and their online equivalent represent a great opportunity to earn new business, but only if the customer experience you provide is up to the challenge. Anybody can turn up the heat, but turning casual browsers into new customers requires warmth. Making people feel welcome goes a long way toward getting them to see what you have to offer, and this applies whether you serve consumers or businesses, in a shop or on a Web site.

Most businesses aim to showoff value first, with announcements about the latest sales and best brands right in customers’ faces when they walk in the door. This can backfire, because it’s very off-putting. Shoppers who know what they’ve come for aren’t interested, and casual foot traffic gets the sense that they are prey for a sales pitch. “How can I help you” is much more welcoming than “what are you looking for,” wouldn’t you agree?

For brick and mortar shops, simple touches like having hot tea or coffee available in the winter—preferably free—and cold drinks in the summer can earn a favorable impression and a closer look. Williams-Sonoma often has free mulled cider in the winter, and remembering that is nearly enough to get me to go there now. Always allow (read: encourage) staff to engage walk-ins in non-sales related conversation as long as it isn’t taking away from something they need to be doing. Things like that go a long way.

Getting beyond specifics like hot drinks and warm conversation in retail stores, the general principle of welcoming applies to any business. If you can make your customers think kindly of you, they will always have you in mind. They will think of you as more than just a supplier of products—and they will spread the word about how pleasant it is to do business with you, even when they’re not actively buying.

Here in the Northeast (New York to be precise) we’ve just had our first big winter storm. It wasn’t as bad as predictions threatened, but it’s still made a mess of things. Ice and snow are now part of our daily lives, along with puddles of slush and people who seem to forget (or to never have learned) how to drive, walk, or operate a thermostat when the weather turns ugly.

As with most big cities, we rely heavily on public services, and even more so when it’s time to dig out from under a snow storm. Unfortunately, those services are among the last strongholds of people who don’t know how to listen to or care about customers. Make no mistake: Citizens are customers of their municipalities, and we’re not always served appropriately.

To be fair, bad weather makes life harder for everybody, including plow drivers and the transit workers who keep the subway stations free of ice. We’re also short on funds to pay for emergency crews. Still, I’ve been noticing an attitude of “I don’t care” this year, and because of the situation it’s hard to provide feedback in a timely and effective manner.

Some of our subways stops are above ground (crazy, isn’t it?) so they receive a heavier load of snow and ice. The steps leading up to the platforms are metal clad, which makes them incredibly slippery when wet. In my travels these past few days I’ve seen a number of stairwells at busy and not-so-busy stops that haven’t been shoveled, swept, salted, or even sanded. Slippery stairs plus impatient people plus city property equals hundreds of potential personal injury claims against a town that can’t really afford to pay. But nobody’s saying a thing, because if we’re using those stairs then we’re on the way to or from someplace, and it’s too cold and miserable to stop.

Yesterday afternoon I watched a snow plow try to make a right turn while a woman pushing a stroller was trying to cross the street. The plow (which had to start from a dead stop) essentially chased the woman out into the middle of the intersection in order to make the turn. But nobody said anything, because it’s cold, and everybody’s on the way to someplace else, and there isn’t a good way to chase down a snow plow on foot.

In both cases, and many more, the incidents get pushed to the back of one’s mind after a while because there’s something else to think about, and no lasting proof, and ultimately nothing gets done. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

If you’ve been keeping up on this whole social CRM thing, you’ll have seen the powerful effect that a photo or a short video can have in motivating corrective behavior when a company screws up. We need to remember that city services are a business, and we’re its customers, and we should hold the city to the same standards of responsibility with the same threat of ridicule. We’ve all got cameras on our mobile phones nowadays (at least many of us do, and the rest are expecting one this Hanukkah-Christmas-Kwanzaa-Solstice-Festivus). So just do what you’d do if your local big box merchant drops the ball on safety and service: Take picture, shoot a video, get it online ASAP. Tweet the incident to your friends and family. Blog about it. Be responsible customers, so that the city can be a responsible entity—or be held responsible.

I’m not advocating playing gotcha with city governments. We’re already far too prone to try and squeeze money out of government in this overly litigious society of ours. This is not about blackmail. This is about making those who watch out for us do what’s right.

Other than that, things are pretty good, and I hope all of you can say the same. Have a happy, healthy, safe holiday (whichever one it is for you), and try not to get too stressed out.